


An Unprompted Comment

by Irrealia



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Missing Scene, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-14
Updated: 2011-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-20 10:05:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irrealia/pseuds/Irrealia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River winds the Doctor up, the Doctor is worse than everybody's aunt, and River overidentifies with antique confessional literature. No one mentions a romance that never happened. An interlude in the middle of “The Day of the Moon”.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unprompted Comment

**Author's Note:**

> The TARDIS swimming pool doesn't strictly need chlorine in the water, but I imagine it wouldn't have that proper swimming pool ambience without it, and have enough hubris to think the TARDIS agrees with me. _Towazugatari_ is indeed a real book, and your humble author read it in university herself (its translated title is _The Confessions of Lady Nijo_ ). Spoilers for “A Good Man Goes to War”, but only if you know what you're looking for.

River wanted a bath, she said, to wash the chlorine from the swimming pool out of her hair. The Doctor had gone down to help her out of the pool and show her to a bedroom, well, her bedroom, except not yet: the room that would be her bedroom, as soon as he showed it to her. Watching how River strode confidently through the corridors in front of him, however, he realised that River doubtless already knew full well where her bedroom was—just like she knew how to fly the TARDIS. From his point of view, it didn't exist yet, but of course, from hers, it had been there for... well who knows how long?

It certainly had been there for some time, because when they opened the door, they found it full of any number of things that neither his present self nor the TARDIS would have thought to put there. River must have done, at some point in the future. Could she even do that? Apparently she could.

He looked around with badly executed stealth, trying to take in as many details as possible before River got more naked than he could be calm about. She toyed with the zip on the back of her damn evening dress in a way that made him think she was about to ask him for help, which would mean touching her, which would mean undressing her, which was distracting him until he noticed the smile wiggling its way into the set of her mouth.

“River, you bad bad girl,” he breathed. “You're trying to wind me up, aren't you.”

Her smile spread into a grin, and she turned to open the door to the washroom, giving him a Look over her shoulder. “You mean it's not working?”

He straightened his spine, crossed his arms over his chest, and tossed his head back, imagining that it looked very devil may care of him. But River, being River, only chuckled merrily and hopped behind the door, poking her nose out quickly before it was completely shut to add, “I hope you enjoy looking through my things Doctor. Oh don't give me that look, we both know you're dying to.”

It wasn't going to be as much fun with her blessing.

Contrary to his expectations, River's was not a particularly exceptional TARDIS bedroom, but it was a bit more spare than the usual outer space baroque design that the TARDIS generally concocted, roundel motifs and bits and bobs everywhere. Rather, the walls were a warm but plain cream, with undecorated roundels that only served to give the walls an extra dimension. There was a circular bed draped with sheer netting in one corner, and a little circular table next to it. In the opposite corner, there was a great oval looking-glass and another, slightly taller circular table at its side. A few handwoven-looking rugs were layered on the smooth wood floor.

Minimalist décor was a fine aide to snooping.

The table by the looking glass, which the Doctor attacked first, was covered with a rather impressive array of unguents and cosmetics, the kind he might not expect a professor of archaeology to own. They were surely too impractical for fieldwork, were they not? But then, he supposed she must need them for costume, espionage, and other deceptions. She couldn't actually show up looking like Cleopatra out of nowhere, even if she gave that impression. He fiddled about with the sticks of kohl and lipstick for a bit before he remembered that some of them were liable to be psychoactive and put them down in too much of a hurry, little phials falling over everywhere, like a small defeated army. He scooped them up and tried to make some sort of order out of them, with only moderate success.

Then he gave himself a once-over in the looking glass, taking a moment to straighten and fluff his bowtie.

He walked over to the bed, afterwards, where he imagined he might get into less trouble. If nothing else the padding would keep him from breaking things. He sat on the bed, testing it out. For all the minimalism of her taste, she liked luxury, River. Her bed was approximately as firm as a marshmallow, and the duvet was an even fluffier down layer atop it. The sheets were all in bronze silk that looked like the metal of the control room. They seemed plain enough from a distance, but they had a softness and sheen to them up close, and the Doctor imagined they must have a delightful feeling on the skin. He supposed he'd find out soon enough. Now was probably not the time to be naked in River Song's bed.

That didn't mean he couldn't kick off his boots, lean back, and flip through the books on her bedside table, though. Books had a way of being the most fascinatingly informative thing a person could own.

The book on top of the small bedtime reading stack was a somewhat elderly looking fascimile of a much more elderly looking document, written in smooth and lovely, but well faded brush calligraphy.

問わず語り, towazu-gatari. Classical Japanese. “An unprompted comment.” Strange title.

There was a lady. They called her Nijo, the Lady of Second Avenue. As a child, her father gave her to his friend the retired emperor as a concubine. Why? Because her mother, his wife, had been the emperor's concubine as well... and he wanted her back. She was long dead, but perhaps her daughter would do. When she was only fourteen, he took her for his consort. And Lady Nijo, she loved the Emperor. She loved many others too, had many a romantic adventure, but it was his favour that gave her a place in the world, “above the clouds” as the Japanese were wont to say then of the court. And though she left the Emperor and the court and the capital, wandered, became a nun, atoned for her worldly sins, nonetheless, she was there when he died, in Miyako, and she saw the funeral procession, and she wept as she never had done for anyone else. The whole of her life had been shaped by him, and now he was gone.

“Enjoying yourself?” River had padded softly out of the bathroom, and she was wearing, aptly enough, a long kimono in TARDIS-blue silk, wave patterns splashed about the padded hem and long sleeves, that she had repurposed as a bathrobe. Her sleeves fluttered after her as she crossed the room to sit down on the bed next to the Doctor.

“Rather more soap-operatic than I expected from you,” snorted the Doctor. “It's all secret pregnancies and tawdry affairs and cheap politicking.”

“And poetry,” said River. “And love. I read it at university first, a long time ago, and I always did wonder about it. Did the Emperor really love her? Or did he just love her because of who her mother was? Who she might be like? And did Nijo really love him for himself? Or was it simply the inevitable outcome of the fact that he had always been at the center of her life in one way or another?”

“You could always have gone back to find out.” He never did understand wondering about the past instead of visiting it.

“That'd spoil the pleasantness of the unsolved mystery. And I think it rather fun, not knowing everything.” River inched closer to him, silk sticking against silk and pulling her kimono down off one shoulder, nearly exposing things he shouldn't be exposed to. Yet.

“You must think so too, or you might be taking advantage of how well I know you right about now, instead of simply wondering how well I do.” She winked and slid her hands down to the belt holding the kimono shut around her damp, clean, ever-so-delicious-looking body.

The Doctor shot out of her bed.

“Better get dressed then, Doctor Song. We have an occupation to oust.”

And he caught one last glimpse of River in her deshabille smiling a little sadly, in the corner of his eye, before he shut the door completely.


End file.
